


The avoidance of particular possibility

by Keenir



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is one of the smartest, quickest-witted of mortal men.  So...how could he not have thought this possible?</p><p>Coda to (the nearly-last episode of s1)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The avoidance of particular possibility

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mustangcandi](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Mustangcandi).



> I'm not going to watch the season 1 two-part finale until I have finished this story.

**WATSON'S POV:**

_"Irene,_ Sherlock said. And she turns around and looks at him.

There's only one Irene whom he would use that familiar tone with...even tinged as it is with disbelief and surprise and - wonder? If I didn't know him better, yeah, I'd swear it was wonder.

One corner of my mind is screaming _But this is Sherlock Holmes! How did he not know? Or how did he not at least suspect??_ By his own admission, the only reason he doesn't consider himself one of the smartest people in the world, is because there's no way to test the claim. I once saw him find a scale in a footprint, and from that he deduced a plot to poison a police officer using a taipan.

So how did Sherlock not at least suspect the possibility that Irene Adler was not, in fact, dead?

You don't even need to allow for the possibility of a supercriminal like Moriarty. Sherlock knows of enough toxins and paralytics and other chemical and biological approaches to making the human body trick medical science. Even as accomplished a nonprofessional like Sherlock himself's been tricked before by people using methods like that.

 _Wait,_ another corner of my mind says as Irene dangles a foot with practiced casualness. _Is it so hard to believe? We've all fallen prey to it..._ Once we make our minds up, we don't like being reminded of that moment when we failed. How much worse to be Sherlock, so very smart, and yet so helpless before a seeming death?

Admitting he was wrong about thinking her dead then...would be a gut wound to much more than simply pride or ego -- to his attic of facts, to his reservoir of intellect. 'If I am wrong here, where else am I wrong? Where else have I gone wrong?'

And that would kill him more surely than any overdose might.

"Watson!" Sherlock says. "This is Irene."

"Hi," I say to her. "Nice to meet you."

She just looks at me.


End file.
